1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to computer systems and more specifically relates to an apparatus and method for displaying information relating to a database to a user.
2. Background Art
Since the dawn of the computer era, computer systems have evolved into extremely sophisticated devices that may be found in many different settings. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware (e.g., semiconductors, circuit boards, etc.) and software (e.g., computer programs). As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer hardware higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Many modern computer systems are a complex combination of different hardware and software that are interconnected on a network. Networks allow computers to share information. Shared information may be stored in a central database. As the need for databases has grown, the complexity of databases has grown as well. In addition, as databases evolve over time, their structure and organization changes. The structure and organization of a database are referred to as the database “schema”. The job of a database administrator is to manage and maintain a database. In order to effectively manage a database, a database administrator must know and understand the database schema. However, many database administrators have been on the job for significantly less time than the database has been running. Ofttimes, there is little or no documentation that specifies the current schema of the database. In known systems, such as the AS/400 computer system by IBM, a new database administrator may have to perform many different queries to generate a number of different lists of objects and relationships in the database. The database manager could then study the lists to determine the schema of the database. This effort is manual, time-consuming and inefficient. Without a way for a database administrator to easily generate and graphically view database schema, the computer industry will continue to suffer from inefficient tools and methods of administrating databases.